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If you’re lucky enough to have one, you better put it to good use.
Two former Weekend editors take on the greatest music festival for indie music artists. Francisco Tirado and Patrick Beane take on the glorious three-day ride.
Two former Weekend editors take on the greatest music festival for indie music artists. Francisco Tirado and Patrick Beane take on the glorious three-day ride.
Two former Weekend editors take on the greatest music festival for indie music artists. Francisco Tirado and Patrick Beane take on the glorious three-day ride.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I wanted to write my obligatory senior graduation column, but I’m writing about gay celebrities again.Tuesday’s illustration by Chicago Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis is making the rounds on social media and news blogs. The illo is simply titled “Jason Collins,” and features two panels: The first shows Tim Tebow saying he’s Christian to a dismissive journalist and the second shows Jason Collins saying he’s gay to an adoring journalist.If you hadn’t heard, NBA player Collins became the first active male athlete to come out as gay in a major U.S. professional sport. Many other NBA players and celebrities have expressed their support, including a “proud” Barack Obama. Stantis’ illustration has been talked about as a fitting explanation of the “culture war” between gays, who increasingly receive positive attention in media, and Christians, who increasingly face persecution for expressing their beliefs. Yeah, a lot of people make fun of Tebow. To suggest this is “persecution” is ludicrous. Tebow is a powerful celebrity who is being made fun of for claiming an identity that rarely faces quotidian violences. Christianity is not an identity that is underrepresented in professional sports. Just about every athlete I’ve watched at a press conference thanks God at least once. It’s an okay thing to do, even a normal thing to do.Tebow was cut by the Jets on Monday, the same day Collins came out, and people have insinuated it’s because of the (lackluster) quarterback’s Christian beliefs. This paranoid suggestion implies that being openly Christian has interfered with sales, which is what actually matters to owners. No, Tebow’s jersey was one of the top-selling in the league, and only began to drop with his playing time. What columnists and illustrators are getting right is that this is a war. It’s a war between two political powerhouses with lots of lobbying sway.Christian organizations actively promote so-called traditional family values, which is mostly the restriction of healthcare to those seeking abortions or the denial of adoption rights to non-straight couples. The gay civil rights movement actively promotes so-called equality for all by way of inclusion for LGBT-identified individuals in national institutions like the military and marriage. Both sides of the culture war subscribe to neoliberal idea that rights to cultural identities are the key to equality and freedom. Both sides ignore how institutions tend not to provide adequate care or resources to poor and/or queer individuals. According to many mass media corporations, being gay is the new normal. It’s becoming increasingly important for gay celebrities to come out of the closet, while still being framed as not a big deal — just someone’s private business.Tebow is flamboyantly Christian, which disrupts mass culture’s understanding of religion as a private practice. If Collins were open about the sex of his sexuality, I don’t think we’d be seeing the same reaction he’s received. Instead, his twin and NBA player Jarron Collins said Jason wants a family, wants to live a normal life. Being gay has been molded into a private, consumer-friendly identity. It’s important that Collins came out, because the sports world could stand to realize that athlete equals masculinity equals straight is a broken equation.But if we look at the way the media has framed this as a culture war, we’ll notice that what we should be proud of is privacy of identity.— ptbeane@indiana.edu
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In a Pitchfork interview, Karin Dreijer Andersson admitted she and bandmate Olof Dreijer considered changing The Knife’s name for new album “Shaking the Habitual.” I wouldn’t blame them. The band’s first proper album in seven years is a different kind of beast than “Silent Shout” and “Deep Cuts.” The closest things we get to The Knife of “Heartbeats” and “We Share Our Mother’s Health” are the album’s stellar opener and closer: “A Tooth For An Eye” and “Ready To Lose.” But even these relatively short and pop-like bookends are driven by a darker sense of restlessness, an unease that creeps in at the heart of the album.There was always something haunting, even sinister, about The Knife, but the band never sounded as pissed off as it does now.The lyrics here directly address gender and class politics more with teeth-baring intensity than in previous releases. At more than 90 minutes, “Shaking the Habitual” will probably piss you off, too. The 19-minute centerpiece “Old Dreams Waiting To Be Revisited” simmers with hissing found sounds and synth bursts. “Fracking Fluid Injection” stretches out 10 minutes’ worth of disorienting bird calls and distorted groans.These songs recall the harsher stretches of the underrated opera “Tomorrow, In A Year,” The Knife’s 2010 collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock. They serve their purpose too: to make the audience question the album and their own listening habits.The rest of the album emphasizes percussion above all else. The songs are at their most danceable when they’re at their most urgent. Epic single “Full of Fire” starts with a sparse dance beat and adds noise after noise until every element in the song is banging a lesson into your head.Andersson’s words aren’t lost in the drums. Her by-now unmistakable voice and vocal effects snake through the clattering beats and shout the album’s political concerns with convincing clarity.The words and music work together throughout to establish a cohesive emotional mood, just as ready and able to get us thinking as they are to get us moving.This is The Knife we’ve been hearing all along, but now, more than ever, it’s a band committed to shaking things up — violently, if need be. “Shaking the Habitual” is a huge record, overflowing with forceful music designed to alienate its audience even as it draws us in.By Patrick Beane
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>What “Oz the Great and Powerful” lacks in courage and brains, it fails to make up for in heart.Disney’s big-budget adaptation coasts along familiar plot points and forgettable dialogue into a tidy ending. “Oz” tries so hard to tell a life-affirming story that it forgets to tell an interesting one. The stakes never feel high.James Franco would be more convincing as Oz, the sentimental conman, if the sentiment weren’t laid on thick and early.The movie stumbles most of all for the distractingly miscast Mila Kunis, who doesn’t ham it up like the script requires.Blockbusters should go for spectacle, but the camerawork and composition are often overwhelmed by the CGI-heavy world. The art direction is beautiful at times, but Oz can feel more like some generic Disney fantasy land than cohesively built world. Director Sam Raimi’s usually exciting visual imagination seems stunted, reduced to token point of view and askew shot selections here and there. At least the 3-D was well done. Despite its emotional posturing, “Oz” doesn’t earn its warmth. This is a Disney cash grab at its most watered down.By Patrick Beane
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>With hi-def production and bedroom lyricism, “Anxiety” is a surreal pop/R&B ride through depression and uplift that always puts feelings first.I first heard Autre Ne Veut (Arthur Ashin) in 2011, featured on Ford & Lopatin’s excellent “Channel Pressure,” of the same label, Software.That album collided ’80s disco/pop melodies with glitchy samples and buzzing synths to create something that felt brand new.“Anxiety,” Ashin’s sophomore, full-length endeavour, sounds like its spiritual successor.What “Channel Pressure” did to the ’80s, “Anxiety” does to the ’90s. And, thanks to Ashin’s barefaced romanticism, it doesn’t feel derivative or ironic for a second.Standout slowjam “Gonna Die” is pure empathy, no pretense as he sings coolly: “I’m gonna die / I feel it more acutely now / than I have for a while.” “Anxiety” succeeds by putting Ashin’s vocal emotion into its bangers.Opener “Play by Play” spirals ever outward from its opening synth chimes into a perfect storm of pop hooks, MIDI percussion and lost love. Pitch-perfect lead single “Counting” sounds desperate even before the sax screams come in.On “Anxiety,” Autre Ne Veut makes something close to a classic out of his heart-on-his-sleeve vocals and ’90s retro-future production.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Singer-songwriter and drone mastermind Liz Harris has a knack for making lullabies out of deep waters of noise.Her best-known (and probably just best) record is 2008’s “Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill.”That album featured strummed acoustic guitars and clear-ish vocals. It’s gorgeous and more approachable than her other work, which tends to focus on the space between ambient tape loops and delay-heavy melodies.Harris also has a knack for keeping busy. She’s released a double album, singles, split EPs and performance pieces since “Dead Deer” was released. Her productivity makes releasing past work seem strange, however welcome.The tracks on “The Man Who Died In His Boat” were recorded after midnight during the same sessions as “Dead Deer,” and the album has a similarly sleepy sound. The songs can be short and sweet, but most head for space, like a retreat into memory or dreams to better deal with waking life. Sparse standout “Living Room” is the best articulation of Grouper’s project yet: “I’m looking for the place the spirit meets the skin.”At the album’s echoing highs, that boundary feels as unsteady as a rocking boat.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“North Korea is likely the most horrible country on this planet,” Denmark Foreign Minister Villy Sovndal said. But what about us? Mass media speculates what North Korea’s nuke could do to San Francisco. Twitter blows up with macabre predictions and ironic jokes. Warmongering national leaders talk about escalating sanctions and violence in the name of self-defense. Tensions between the United States and North Korea run high, and everyone’s favorite militaristic rhetoric is being tossed around like Oscar buzz. Days after North Korea released propaganda depicting a U.S. city in flames while “We Are The World” plays in the background, the country’s foreign minister confirmed it has conducted a nuclear test. The infamously unpredictable country conducted its third nuclear test — the first under the new leadership of Kim Jong-un — on the same day as President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. North Korea’s foreign minister called the test an act of self-defense in response to U.S. “hostility” — likely referring to increased sanctions following a rocket launch in December. Further measures were threatened if the U.S. complicates the situation. Lines are being drawn in the sand between the impoverished nation and the world superpower, and superlatives can be found in journalistic articles left and right.The language in these news articles is doing something specific: fortifying the binary opposition of desperately evil North Korea and the good, civilized U.S.What’s at stake when a country is represented as everything the U.S. is not?I’m afraid of the answers.Some articles lament that North Korea has continued the legacy of “military first” policies left by Kim Jong-il. It’s facetious at best to suggest the U.S. has not also operated on military first policies in the past decade.America maintains a massive nuclear arms arsenal to this day, and it makes me nervous when a country committing terror in Pakistan talks big about taking adequate measures against North Korea. Obama described the nuclear test as “highly provocative” and threatened international retaliation. I don’t mean to downplay the significance of North Korea’s potential nuclear armament. I want to emphasize how the language we use dangerously dehumanizes non-Americans.I want to recognize that every time we talk about desperate, impoverished, evil North Korea, we overlook extreme poverty and militarism in the U.S.Of all the international responses, I’m most comforted by China’s insistence that North Korea and global police alike “respond calmly” to the test. Those words suggest actual humans are being erased by all this nationalist posturing.It’s a welcome relief from America’s exceptional pastime of big-stick-wielding.— ptbeane@indiana.edu
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The ban on women in combat has been lifted.Following last year’s lawsuit pressed by four servicewomen that challenged the 1994 ban, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced women will be able to serve in combat as early as this May.I was immediately excited, but soon I questioned myself for being happy about women gaining formal legal equality to kill for the military industrial complex. It seemed like a hollow civil rights victory that won’t actually help many women.Then I read the comments sections for articles about the change. Comments everywhere from The Washington Post to Mother Jones to Fox News were so disappointing they were hard to believe. It’s all too easy for me to forget how many people deeply believe women are inferior to men or intrinsically suited to middle-class feminine roles.Men’s rights advocates and other misogynists often argue women are privileged for their ineligibility to serve in combat. That’s about to change, even if it doesn’t change much in reality.“We have women in combat roles right now. We are just not able to promote them,” former Navy Lieutenant Carey Lohrenz said in an National Public Radio interview.The new circumstances mean women will become eligible for 238,000 military jobs and proper recognition for their roles in combat. These are substantive changes that will challenge anti-women sentiments and reveal some of the basic assumptions and violences committed by gender-normative sentiments. Yeah, liberal feminist theory often eludes meaningful confrontations with co-articulated oppressions based on race, class and sexuality in its arguments for individualist equality. But there’s a tactical place for it.Let’s get this right: access to combat roles in the sacred U.S. military will change controlling images of women in dominant culture.Current language about women in the military represents and enforces widely felt misconstructions about women as a category.Women’s limited role in the U.S. military has long been used as evidence to naturalize binaristic gender difference.Women’s weakness would jeopardize their fellow soldiers. Women aren’t capable of leading men in battle. Women can’t handle tough battlefield conditions. Women would distractingly sexualize the frontlines. Women are always getting too pregnant to fight.Allowing women access to previously restricted roles can at worst destabilize some of these assumptions and at best force online commentators to change their tune.If this change was paired with comprehensive reform on the treatment (cover-up) of sexual assault and rape within the military, it’d be an even greater victory.As the lifted ban stands, it’s important to remember the way we talk about people relates how we perceive and interact with the world.— ptbeane@indiana.edu
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It could’ve been a classic.Abandoned by their birth-father, Victoria and Lilly get supernatural assistance raising themselves in a cabin in the woods for five years before their uncle’s search party discovers them.The child actors make sisters feel real, and Chastain and Coster-Waldau dazzle as their surrogate parents, Annabel and Jeffrey. Chastain hints at warmth behind the disaffected rocker archetype, and her relationship with the two girls is the emotional heart of “Mama.”Instead, it spends way too much time alternating between drawn-out exposition and forced scares. The film gets repetitive.The film draws heavily from ghostly J-horror — “Mama’s” twisted maternal psychology, jerky body-horror, clicking vocal effects and cold color palette — but rarely unnerves as a creature feature.“Mama” is at its best and scariest when it delves deep into the characters. As Annabel gradually accepts a maternal role, the film deftly interweaves dread-inducing scenes of dark humor and psychological horror.Beautifully acted, the dread of “Mama” is lost somewhere in the telling.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The National Rifle Association is making itself an easy target.A month after the Newtown, Conn., shooting, the gun rights organization’s latest campaign involves attacking President Barack Obama as an “elitist hypocrite.”The attack ad was released a few days ago, along with an iPad and iPhone application that lets users 4-and-up practice firing guns at coffin-shaped targets.Come on, NRA.According to the video, the president is hypocritical for allowing armed guards to protect his daughters Sasha and Malia, while criticizing the idea of armed guards in public schools.This seems like a no-brainer, but the Secret Service protecting political targets is different from gun-wielding civilians protecting schools.The video is a self-parody fit for “SNL” and The Onion. A gravelly voice strings together an argument that somehow manages to ramble in just 36 seconds. “Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. But he is just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”Seriously?My favorite moment shows Obama’s glaring visage obscured by a pile of spinning, computer-generated $100 bills.Then an Avengers-style team of elitist hypocrites and Democrat higher-ups is shown defended by military black ops soldiers.The video seems like an unfocused effort by the NRA to once again align Obama with anti-gun, anti-American sentiment.But, the conversation about gun rights shouldn’t be about Obama or the deep rift in American partisan politics. I don’t want to pick on the NRA here for being militaristic lunatics caught up in the nationalist violence of abstract masculinity. I want to pick on the NRA for making a video that diverts attention from what guns can do.Still, an angry video this bizarre makes sense in the wake of violence. It was disarming to see the all-too-familiar sight of crying parents and cop cars outside a school. The sense of impending political fallout is maybe even more familiar. So, we get attack ads. We get desperate defenses of gun rights. I just wonder if we can conceive of this conversation outside of party lines. It seems obvious to me that guns won’t reduce gun violence, sacrosanct Constitutional freedoms be damned.Funnily enough, gun advocates might have gotten worked up about nothing. Obama’s not even doing that much. He abused his executive power by acting like the president to pass legislation that calls for states to better share background check information, provides incentives for public schools to hire police officers and begins a nationwide campaign about gun safety.The proposed congressional actions seem just as dubious — reducing the number of rounds allowed per magazine, reinstating a ban on assault weapons and deploying more police officers on the ground.The muted response of gun advocates to this legislation seems a fitting counterpoint to the perfect mockery the NRA made of the situation.Maybe it’s a sign this step in the right direction was a little more like standing still.— ptbeane@indiana.edu
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A$AP Rocky is a $3-million Frankenstein’s monster. With a record deal that huge, you’d expect Sony/RCA to file away at his weirdness. Instead, studio debut “LONG.LIVE.A$AP” showcases every bit of A$AP’s talent.A$AP has received attention for his collision of Dirty South and East Coast sounds and draws on influences ranging from Lil B to Tyler, the Creator. He’s a freaky, perfect distillation of everything hip in the rap game right now, and he makes it all sound original, even classic.Singles “Goldie” and “Fuckin’ Problems” are infectious, the beat selection is top-notch and A$AP’s flow is confident and restrained throughout the album. There’s even a posse cut called “1 Train.” It has a dirty, old-school beat with great turns from Kendrick Lamar , Danny Brown , Big K.R.I.T. , Yelawolf , Joey Bada$$ and Action Bronson .In other words, A$AP does it all.“LONG.LIVE.A$AP” is one of those rare debuts that lives up to the hype.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Full-throated and wide-eyed, “Les Misérables” wears its heart on its sleeve with style. Unfairly imprisoned do-gooder Jean Valjean (Jackman) leaves prison to do good, raises the sickly child of his ex-employee Fantine (Hathaway) and repeatedly crosses paths with his morally absolute jailor Javert (Crowe).There’s also a love triangle, a revolution and Helena Bonham Carter.Despite the musical’s bombast, director Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”) ditches theatrics for a restrained visual style that humanizes the performances.Vocals recorded live on set give the production a gravity that could’ve been lost in the spectacle. The period sets and costumes are gritty masterpieces.All of this makes “Les Mis” feel realistic despite its plot, which it definitely isn’t. Thankfully, the leads have the chops to sell the story. Hathaway steals the show, hitting all the right emotional beats while she sings her heart out on “I Dreamed a Dream.”If the voices falter from time to time, the emotions ring true throughout. By the time revolutionary lover Marius (Eddie Redmayne) laments his fallen comrades on “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables,” it only makes sense to cry.Hooper’s “Les Misérables” is a realistic telling of unrealistic romance, and it feels just right. By Patrick Beane
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>About halfway through this watered-down tribute to the 1974 horror masterpiece, you realize “Texas Chainsaw 3D” is up to something different. The action gets interesting and even fun after that.But never scary.The first 45 minutes or so are an exercise in sub-genre tropes. The movie opens right after the events of the original, where locals set fire to the twisted Sawyer family’s home. One resourceful Texan steals a baby, who later sets out to discover the truth about her parents, from the ashes.After various instances of sex, drugs and blood, the movie opens up.Don’t take the “3D” in the title lightly. “Texas Chainsaw 3D” exploits the gimmick whenever possible, including everything from a few spatters of blood to countless chainsaw jabs. Because the suspense is so low, the shocks begin to feel more annoying than terrifying.The movie does an admirable job of exploring the mythology of Leatherface, but the plot feels overly contrived.Though it never gets scary, the ending twist plays with slasher conventions enough to make “Texas Chainsaw 3D” worth it for genre junkies.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my gender studies classes, it’s that privilege, like Jesus or drone warfare, works in mysterious ways.“Academia’s fascist discourse” – the headline of my colleague Alex Carlisle’s latest column – got me excited. I assumed the writer would be arguing that academia doesn’t make room for unconventional, supposedly non-academic discourses. Or maybe that U.S. state-school academia is bogged down in bureaucracy and harmful to an enriching education.Instead, Carlisle accuses academia of being so afraid of offending different people that it’s intolerant of middle-class white hetero American males.For starters, academia is not a monolithic institution of Marxists. Like, some of us are just communist free lovers.Carlisle writes: “The sad thing is, these politically correct fascists have great influence in the society, especially on the youth who think they actually learn things in gender studies classes.”Hey now, that’s a cheap shot. Let’s get this queer: “academia” is not petrified of offending everyone. School administrators are. They’re afraid of lawsuits based on conservative ideas about political correctness.The academia I enjoy loves to offend. It asks stark questions about how we live our lives. It asks me to check my privileges. It asks me to challenge my language, especially that which I use to refer to people. Not just so people’s feelings aren’t hurt, but because language changes how we think about and imagine people.I can abide people who question the utility of changing language. It’s a question well worth examining.What I can’t abide is privileged folks’ played-out circlejerk about how minoritized persons are bent on the destruction of every white Christian cisgender heterosexual capitalist. I’ll refer to this construct as “Romney” for short. Not all minoritized persons hate Romneys. In this case, they want to make Romneys question the motivations behind, and consequences of, certain language. Romneys need to recognize that institutional language generically refers to non-Romney people, and that Romneys are the assumed subjects of “normal” language.Romneys aren’t inherently evil. Romneys just don’t experience the daily, institutional and pervasive violences that non-Romneys do.Language is one of those violences. Carlisle points out several useful examples.“So, for instance, rather than use the word ‘chairman,’ students must use the word ‘chairperson.’ Rather than use the words ‘foreigner’ or ‘alien,’ students must use the terms ‘visitor from another country’ or ‘immigrant.’ Rather than ‘disabled person,’ use ‘person with a disability’ or ‘differently abled.’”Chairman assumes that all people in charge are men, or that the default person is male. Chairperson neutralizes a term that needs not be gender-specific.When someone is called a foreigner or alien, they are assumed to not belong in their state of residence. They are dehumanized and criminalized. Persons with disability better describes someone whose entire person is not defined by disability. Differently abled better establishes a continuum of ability (though I’ve noticed some unease with this term).There’s a difference between political correctness and using humanizing language to refer to, well, humans. There’s a difference between humanizing language and fascist intolerance of people who are assumed to be normal.It’s not an attack on normative people. It’s an attack on the language that partially polices and maintains this norm. It doesn’t take a gender studies major to notice some people don’t have as much power as others.— ptbeane@indiana.edu
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>That’s it?We’ve been through a lot with Bella, Edward and Jacob. We deserve a big, emotional finale. “Breaking Dawn Part 2” isn’t it.The un-epic conclusion to “The Twilight Saga” sucks the last life out of the series, and it’s not pretty. Romance has been replaced with sloppy exposition and meaningless showdowns. When the good vampires and bad vampires finally go head to head, it’s hard to care about the outcome.It’s a shame, because this had the potential to be the best “Twilight” movie yet.Returning director Bill Condon injected life into the franchise with the first part of “Breaking Dawn” last year. The honeymooning Cullens actually felt like a couple, Jacob’s role was fleshed out and gorgeous visuals propelled the action. It was a pretty good Hollywood blockbuster and a great “Twilight” movie.“Part 2” opens with promising changes: Bella is now a vampire, she and Edward are newlywed parents and Jacob has imprinted on their daughter.Nothing comes of it. The movie breezes through the emotional conflicts without much fanfare.Bella takes to her new abilities with ease. Edward and Bella share maybe five minutes of screentime with their daughter. Jacob just glares at anyone who comes too close to his imprintee.Bella and Edward’s sex gets better, but that’s the only difference becoming a vampire makes to their relationship. There’s no hint that maybe the change has affected her interiority or her feelings for Edward. Kristen Stewart gets to do a little more as Bella, but her character is still locked in a passive role. Instead, the movie focuses on a contrived conflict with the ambiguously evil Volturi order of vampires who feel threatened by Edward and Bella’s baby, Renesme.It’s a good excuse for an army of super-powered vampires to come together, but it doesn’t make for interesting storytelling. Things ascend into high camp for the final battle, which must set a record for decapitations and dismemberments in a PG-13 movie.“Twilight” movies have never been technical knockouts, but here the shortcomings get distracting.For the first 30 minutes or so, Renesme is a CGI baby from the depths of the uncanny valley. Voice-over narration pops in and out during the middle third of the film. The vampires’ special abilities look out of place in the “Twilight” universe.Twihards might read into what little characterization the movie offers, but “Breaking Dawn Part 2” mostly feels like a franchise on autopilot toward an easy conclusion.By Patrick Beane
It can't be. It's impossible.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Guns, cars, girls and martinis. Why is 007 still so cool?James Bond is somehow more and less than that hypermasculine formula for box office success. He’s constantly reinvented, but he’s always cool. Or supposed to be.The $5 billion and 23-film Eon Productions franchise has had its fair share of bland Bonds. 2008’s “Quantum of Solace” featured Daniel Craig as a single-minded 007 ruthlessly pursuing revenge. “The Bond franchise suffers when he becomes a kind of blunt action hero and an inarticulate one,” said Stephen Watt, IU Department of English chair and co-editor of “Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007.”The Bond of “Quantum of Solace” did everything Bond should do, but just wasn’t cool. Craig himself criticized that film’s underwritten 007, who lacked the character depth that elevates Bond above other action heroes. Critics and audiences agree “Skyfall” is a return to form.Craig’s 007 is back, and once again he feels like a real, smart and soulful Bond. It’s more than the suit and the gadgets that make the character what he is.Craig strikes at something closer to the Bond of Fleming’s books, replete with physicality and moodiness. The latest Bond even cries.In Craig’s portrayal, “that vulnerability in that hypermasculinity is still there,” Watt said.Fleming’s 007 coped with depression and had a deeper emotionality than was represented in most of the classic Bond films. He was still defined by his desirability and the interchangeability of his sexual conquests.Filmmakers in “Skyfall” have smartly shied away from the clichéd image of every woman in sight throwing herself at Bond, which seems more cartoonishly mysogynist than cool.Mainstream feminism and understandings of rape culture demand an overhaul of Bond’s detached and magnetic brand of heteromasculinity, once a hallmark of the character. In “Casino Royale,” Craig’s first appearance, Bond gets as close to true love as he has since “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” His partner, Vespier Lynd (Eva Green) betrays him, and the audience gets an explanation for Bond’s fragmented misogyny. It’s unsophisticated gender politics, but it delves more deeply into Bond’s psyche than most of the movies have been willing to. And Vesper is more than a disposable Bond girl.“She’s tough, and she’s smart, and she’s quick-witted, and I think it’s really important that that be retained in the script,” Watt said. “Otherwise, the womanizing and the eye candy and the promiscuity become kind of meaningless.”A formidable female lead can make or break Bond as a compelling character. In “Skyfall,” that lead is a familiar face.“The ultimate Bond girl is Judi Dench, is M,” Watt said.M, the head of M16, matches Bond line for line, plays him and holds her cards close to her chest. In “Skyfall,” she is the emotional backbone and motivation of the plot.Once you add relevant political context to the complicated female lead, “Skyfall” redefines Bond as a real pop cultural player.Oscar-winner Javier Bardem’s Raoul Silva is an ex-MI6 agent come back to wreak cyberterror on M and M16. He looks like the ghost of government deceit returning to haunt the state — a villain for contemporary Britain. His whiteface and blonde hair are symbolic remnants of the imperial imprint British secret intelligence left on him.It’s a revealing story of national insecurity about national security, political commentary fit for a post-9/11 modern-colonial West anxious about its uncertain enemies.Though the movies don’t need cultural commentary to strike gold or tell a good story, the success of Bond seems in large part due to his relevance. Without it, he’s not cool. “Skyfall” makes Bond matter today. 007 is cool again. Again.